Monthly Archives: July 2014

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It was the pivotal teaching of Pluthero Quixos, the most celebrated dramatist of the Second Dominion, that in any fiction, no matter how ambitious its scope or profound its theme, there was only ever room for three players. Between warring kings, a peacemaker; between adoring spouses, a seducer of a child. Between twins, the spirit of the womb. Greater numbers might drift through the drama, of course–thousands in fact–but they could only ever be phantoms, agents, or, on rare occasions, reflections of the three real and self-willed beings who stood at the center. And even this essential trio would not remain intact, or so he taught. It would steadily diminish as the story unfolded, three becoming two, two becoming one, until the stage was left deserted.

Needless to say, this dogma did not go unchallenged. The writers of fables and comedies were particularly vociferous in their scorn, reminding the worthy Quixos that they inevitably ended their own tales with a marriage and a feast. He was unrepentant. He dubbed them cheats and told them they were swindling their audiences out of what he called the last great procession, when, after the wedding songs had been sung and the dances danced, the characters took their melancholy way off into darkness, following each other into oblivion.

The inhabitants of this island have the appearance of human babies, but speak and reason as adults.

They claim to have been born on another planet, but to have died. Their religion holds that, to avoid damnation, a person must undergo a rite of purification similar to baptism. The inhabitants of the isle claim to be those who died before undergoing this rite, but who had committed no other offence.

As such, they claim to be living in the mildest possible form of damnation.